Why Your Fleet’s Abrupt Starts and Stops Matter
12 Sep 2018
Heavy traffic, accidents, and bad weather driving can lead to all kinds of stops and starts that are bad news for your fleet vehicles. There are many reasons this type of driving is bad for your vehicle and we’ll explore many of them below.
How Does Rapid Acceleration and Sudden Braking Effect Your Vehicles?
Fleet vehicles travel many miles in the course of a day, week, month, and year. Preserving the mechanical soundness of these vehicles helps them get a few extra miles in their lifetimes before needing mechanical intervention or requiring replacement.
Not only does flooring your accelerators when the light turns green or from a full stop waste gas, but it can also damage your vehicles in the following ways. Fast acceleration, for instance, can cause unnecessary strain on the drivetrain components in your fleet vehicles. Sudden braking causes added wear to the brakes and can result in brake failures or more frequent need to replace the brakes.
Regardless of whether drivers in your fleet are guilty of one or both these practices, it’s likely costing your fleet money by increasing fueling costs, requiring more frequent repairs and part replacements, and possibly even shortening the life and usefulness of fleet vehicles.
The bottom line is simple. These driving behaviors cost your fleet money. What steps can you take to reduce the financial burden of these types of driving behavior on your fleet?
Change Your Policies and Enforce the Changes
Educating drivers about the consequences of their actions, as far as profit, income, and even job security for them is a great start. Drivers understand dollars and cents and are likely to respond favorably if they believe they may benefit from changing their habits. However, incentivizing better driving behavior isn’t enough if you have no way to measure the changes.
That’s where GPS fleet tracking comes into the picture. You can set up your GPS fleet tracking system to notify you with alerts whenever drivers engage in sudden accelerations, hard braking, and even costly idling. That way you can reward drivers who change their behaviors appropriately and discipline, according to your company policy, those who are not coming around and making the necessary changes.
Getting a handle on driver behavior can save your fleet a great deal of money. It can also help you improve the reputation of your business and your drivers in the communities you serve. It’s a win for everyone and GPS fleet tracking can help. Contact us here at LiveViewGPS at 1-888-544-0494 to learn more.
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